Welcome to the BitSplatter Blog. Here I'll share my experiences in [amateur] electrical engineering, physical computing, video games and parenting. I created this blog because I am so very thankful for the countless people on the internet that have taken the time to share their experiences with the world (and, more directly, me.) I simply want to pay that sharing forward.

I suspected that Max was sitting on the nice white chair in the living room while we were away during the daytime. So I set up a Raspberry Pi webcam system that was accessible via any browser anywhere.

Here’s how to do it:

sudo nano /etc/hosts, change your host name to what you want it to be (i.e. “cam-livingroom”)

127.0.1.1 cam-livingroom

sudo nano /etc/hostname, change your host name to what you want it to be (i.e. “cam-livingroom”)

cam-livingroom

Set up the wifi SSID & password. Run sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces The interfaces file should look like this in the end:

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0
auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "ssid"
wpa-psk "password"

Shut down the Pi, insert the wifi dongle, reboot.

run sudo apt-get update AND sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install motion (webcam capture software)

during this install there may be some errors. If there are, run sudo apt-get upgrade and/or sudo apt-get update (I can’t remember which one) and then run sudo apt-get install motion again.

Configure camera capture settings: sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf

daemon on
framerate 2
minimum_frame_time 5## number of seconds between shots
output_all on## output images even when there is no motion
text_double on## enlarges the timestamp overlay
webcam_port 8081## for each webcam, this needs to be a unique number
webcam_localhost off## allows access from other IP addresses

sudo nano /etc/default/motion

start_motion_daemon = yes

Plug in the webcam (you may need to reboot for the webcam to work)

sudo service motion start

Open Firefox (this is the only browser in which this currently works) and go to 192.168.1.XXX:8081. You should see an image that automatically updates every 5 seconds.